Eagle-Killing, Investment-Wasting ‘Renewable’ Energy

The “Green Energy” sector has been hit with a series of setbacks over the last few years. From a wind farm being cited for killing an endangered eagle, to solar energy’s tumble from investor favor over dismal performance, to a growing list of companies gone bankrupt even after President Obama pumped millions of our tax dollars into them, the so-called Green Energy sector has certainly seen better, more hopeful days.

In the realm of farce, a wind farm in Nevada finds itself at an unfortunate crossroads of political correctness. Even as the wind farm in White Pine County, Nevada is a favored “Green Energy” nirvana, the company that runs it is under threat of sanctions by the federal government. Why? Because a protected Golden Eagle flew into one of the farm’s turbines killing itself.

Now, San Francisco-based Pattern Energy is awaiting a decision from the feds on whether or not they will have to pay a $3,000 fine for killing the endangered bird.

But as the President might say, that is but “a bump in the road.” Worse than the death of a protected eagle, a recent analysis reveals that the bottom has fallen out of solar energy investments.

One of the problems is that it seems that federal subsidies for solar companies is on the wane. “Public subsidies helped prop up failed companies like Solyndra,” CNBC recently noted. But these subsidies are not as plentiful as they once were and “reality” is now hitting the solar industry making it look like the next dotcom bust.

But this can’t be a surprise to anyone that has followed all the bankruptcies of the more than 30 “Green Energy” companies to which President Obama generously bestowed millions in federal tax dollars.

At least 34 companies have gone belly up despite the millions the President lavished upon them.

As the Heritage Foundation reported last October, “The 2009 stimulus set aside $80 billion to subsidize politically preferred energy projects. Since that time, 1,900 investigations have been opened to look into stimulus waste, fraud, and abuse, and nearly 600 convictions have been made. Of that $80 billion in clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits, at least 10 percent has gone to companies that have since either gone bankrupt or are circling the drain.”

All this criminal activity, graft, and millions in waste of our tax dollars, is supposed to stop global warming, of course. You have to break a few eggs, right? But maybe all that effort is unnecessary?

Recently, researchers have found themselves “puzzled” over a twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures. Global warming has seemingly stopped. And this is long before any of the government money wasted on the “problem” has really made any difference.

Even if temps were still rising, all the billions spent by governments across the world in hopes of “solving” global warming is more on the level of farce than solution. John Stossel, for instance, recently found that for all the billions Germany has spent on climate change, their massive efforts will only delay global warming for 37 hours.

Despite the collapse of all this “science” and its supporting industries, though, President Obama and his out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency could be poised to implement cap-and-trade regulations by fiat.

As any fan of Al Gore knows, cap-and-trade has failed to get through Congress several times. But even as President Obama campaigned for President in 2008 pledging that electric rates would “necessarily skyrocket,” he’s always wanted a cap-and-trade law to further depress the U.S. business sector. Our elected representatives and senators, however, have been an impediment to the President’s climate change crusade.

But Obama has had a solution of sorts to that roadblock. Since he became President, one of his chief methods of getting his way has been to initiate dodgy Executive Orders and put in place regulators that pass fiat rules that subject the economy to policies that he can’t get through the proper way.

With his reelection, the President is free to drive even harder on these backdoor solutions. At a recent panel discussion, for instance, Obama’s former EPA administrator, Carol Browner, said that the President was ready to push more such rules on the business sector and possibly institute a fiat cap-and-trade scheme.

Warner Todd Huston

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigJournalsim.com and all Breitbart News' other sites, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, and many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs across the country to discuss his opinion editorials and current events as well as appearing on TV networks such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and various Chicago-based news programs.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com.
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